— PROJECT NAME
Nat Geo Cognitive Walkthrough
— ROLE
CW facilitator
Research lead
— DATE
06/2017
Nat Geo Cognitive Walkthrough: Enhancing Information Architecture
National Geographic's website, attracting over 26 million monthly visitors, organizes its digital content into core subject areas. However, the navigation menu is categorized by media types (videos, photos, etc.), potentially hindering user experience. To evaluate and improve the site's information architecture, I conducted a Cognitive Walkthrough to identify usability issues related to discoverability, findability, and conceptual mapping within the navigation menus and search results pages.
My Roles and Contributions
As the facilitator of the Cognitive Walkthrough, I introduced usability experts to the interface, outlined target users and tasks, and guided them through evaluating each step as a "success" or "failure" based on established guidelines. The walkthrough revealed key usability challenges, including inconsistent navigation and a lack of clarity in search results. While this case study did not include implementing design changes, the insights gained highlighted opportunities to enhance user satisfaction by improving navigation consistency, organizing content more effectively, and addressing search functionality issues.
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What is a cognitive walkthrough?
A cognitive walkthrough is used to identify the pain points of navigational pathways.
A facilitator introduces usability experts to an interface, describes the target users, states a task, and demonstrates all steps required to complete the task.
The task is then recreated by usability experts using the steps provided by the facilitator. Each step is then analyzed to be a “success” or “failure” using a set of guidelines >
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USABILITY FINDINGS
Based on Cognitive Walkthrough results
NAVIGATION: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE / CONCEPTUAL MAPPING
There are three (3) different menus on the homepage, that open up to different and inconsistent menu options. Hamburgers also move location throughout the site, and open up to different styled drop-down menus.
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SEARCH RESULTS PAGE: VISUAL SIGNIFIERS & SORTING FEATURES
Current search results page do not have a sorting tool, or visual cues differentiating Videos from TV. Videos are different from TV shows, but have misleading "On TV" labels.
NAVIGATION DESIGN CHANGES
-A CENTRAL, CONSISTENT, AND ORGANIZED (BY SUBJECT) SITEMAP
-A LEFT-HAND SIDEBAR FOR SUB-CATEGORIES
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SEARCH RESULTS DESIGN CHANGES
-A VIDEO TAB TO DIFFERENTIATE TV AND VIDEO RESULTS
-A SORTING TOOL
